Asha and Jet 2006 October 12 20:51
Posted by diamond in : Work, Random , trackbackI had a rather unusual evening today. As i was getting off of the train in balbriggan, i noticed a woman carrying a very large cardboard box off of a carriage ahead. I was thinking to myself that that must have been damn awkward to get onto the train with the amount of people crowded around when she went back onto the train to retrieve a child in a buggy. She was quite clearly flustered, and almost knocked the box off of the platform as i was approaching, so i grabbed it for her. She hurriedly said thanks and tried to move both box and buggy along the platform towards the exit. It wasn’t going well; she was obviously far too stressed and the task was too much for one person regardless. I picked up the box and motioned that i’d carry it out of the station for her.
On the way she asked me if i knew a number for a cab company in balbriggan. I said that i didn’t, but that my car was parked nearby if she’d like a lift. She seemed quite taken aback at the offer, but gladly accepted it, remarking that i was soooo nice, too nice in fact. I replied “Yeah, it’s a bit suspicious”, to which she laughed and agreed. I told her to wait at the station and that i’d be back in about 10 minutes. On the walk to the car it occurred to me that she might well either think better of taking a lift with a random stranger or find a cab in the time i was gone. Feeling a bit stressed that i might be wasting my time i returned to the station to find her sitting on the steps in front smoking a cigarette. It turned out she’d also been worrying that i might not return, and had decided to finish smoking before giving up on me.
I gave her and her daughter a lift home, stopping at supervalu on the way (where she bought me a box of cadbury’s roses to say thanks). She introduced herself as Asha. I later found out her daugher, whose name was Jet, was 4 months old. Asha is of a very mixed descent (i know irish, arabic, and japanese were mentioned in the list), is a single mother, musician with her own sca band, and is trained in a whole bunch of things all of which she regretfully admits are both really difficult and completely useless. She invited me in for a drink, which i declined until she said she wanted to play me a couple of songs she’d recorded. The first was an elvis cover, not really my taste. The second was one of her own, more in the style of pj harvey, which i approve of. After chatting for a while i took my leave as it was quite obvious she wasn’t going to relax and stop trying to say thank you every couple of sentences. All in all, it was quite a surreal experience. Here’s to stepping outside of the routine every once in a while.
I found out today that i’m probably going to the states for work for the first 3 weeks of november or so. This means i’ll probably be able to attend the ubuntu developer summit that’s being held in google hq in mountainview. Horrah -) The whole trip idea however does fill me with some fear. I’m not the most social of people, and i’ll be chucked in at the deep-end over there. I’m sure it will work out fine, i just don’t expect i’ll relax from now until i’ve been there for a week or so and not died yet -)
Comments»
yah, it’s fuuny and scary how we, at the end of the day, only are visitors of reality. Who’s the Director? Who picked the cast? And who creates the sound track?
On another note, have you tried to hack that Maple thing yet?
Unfortunately i don’t have access to a windows machine currently, and won’t until i find permenant accomadation and get to bring my desktop up from storage in athlone. It’s been on my mind though.